After urging city residents to stay home and not get their hair done, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (shown) got her own hair professionally cut this weekend because, she says, she “felt like” she needed it.
Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker issued a statewide stay-at-home order effective March 21-April 7, later extending it through the end of April. That order also shuttered businesses the Democratic governor deemed nonessential, among them beauty salons and barbershops.
Soon after Pritzker’s order took effect, Lightfoot, also a Democrat, recorded several public service announcements encouraging people to heed the governor’s edict. Lightfoot posted them on Twitter with the comment “I don’t have much time to myself these days, but I felt I needed to make sure everyone knows how I feel about this Stay at Home Order. Which one motivates you the most to stay at home? #StayHomeSaveLives.”
Some of the ads, which were recorded at the home the openly lesbian Lightfoot shares with her “wife” and their adopted daughter, take a humorous tack. In one, Lightfoot, during a telephone conversation, tells a friend, “Getting your roots done is not essential!”
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Ah, but that rule is for the little people, not someone as important as the mayor of America’s third-largest city. Over the weekend, Lightfoot got stylist Cashmere Neal to cut her hair. According to CBS2 Chicago, Neal, in a Facebook post, “thanked the mayor for allowing her to cut her hair on Sunday” and posted a picture of herself with Lightfoot in which “the two are standing inches apart without masks.”
Questioned Monday about the apparent contradiction between her words and her deeds, Lightfoot “acknowledged getting a haircut” but tried to steer the conversation to other topics, reported the Chicago Tribune.
“I think what really people want to talk about is, we’re talking about people dying here. We’re talking about significant health disparities. I think that’s what people care most about,” Lightfoot said.
At least some of the reporters in attendance didn’t take the bait. When one followed up on the haircut question, Lightfoot replied, “We are trying to do the best that we can under difficult circumstances. I am practicing social distancing. The woman who cut my hair had a mask and gloves on.”
The photo posted by Neal, however, showed them right next to each other; and if Neal wore a mask while cutting Lightfoot’s hair, she had clearly removed it by the time the picture was taken. (CBS2 said that it had received complaints “that the mayor is not always social distancing at other public events.”)
After another reporter brought up the ad in which Lightfoot declared professional hairdressing nonessential during the coronavirus outbreak, “a visibly annoyed Lightfoot said, ‘I’m the public face of this city. I’m on national media and I’m out in the public eye,’” wrote the Tribune.
“I’m a person who, I take my personal hygiene very seriously. As I said, I felt like I needed to have a haircut,” she added. “I’m not able to do that myself, so I got a haircut. You want to talk more about that?”
Of course, many Americans have felt like they needed haircuts in recent weeks, but unlike Lightfoot, they weren’t able to obtain them because politicians have declared such services nonessential and therefore illegal for the duration of the coronavirus “crisis,” whose end those same politicians will unilaterally determine.
Criticism of Lightfoot’s haircut came not just from the Right, as expected, but from the Left. Chicago Socialist Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, who considers Lightfoot too conservative, tweeted: “She is under no obligation to look good on national TV. She is under no obligation to book national interviews. But she is under an obligation to follow and promote social distancing in order to save lives. This is a bad example for our city.”
Asked by the Tribune about Lightfoot’s tonsorial treatment, Pritzker refused comment but said he hasn’t gotten his own locks trimmed since his stay-at-home order took effect.
“I’m going to turn into a hippie at some point,” he quipped.
Lightfoot, on the other hand, needn’t worry about turning into a hippie — just a hypocrite.
Photo: AP Images
Michael Tennant is a freelance writer and regular contributor to The New American.
